Accuse us of favoritism all you want, but our fingers were nowhere near the scale on this one. With just over 20% of the vote, SIG SAUER’s P320 has been duly elected as our reader’s favorite new handgun of 2014. The striker fired offering from SIG SAUER features a unique chassis system that allows just about every feature of the gun to be changed out and customized, and all of the replacement kits can be sent straight to your door including new grips. Plus, the steeper grip angle and typical SIG SAUER craftsmanship make it a pleasure to shoot.
For those interested in such things, the full results for this year’s awards can be found here. Keep in mind that respondents were given the option to vote or skip each section individually, and items which were not released (or announced, or started production, or were “new” in any way) for 2014 have been removed from the top of the list. As you can see, with the P320, it wasn’t even close — people seem to really like it, getting nearly three times as many votes as the GLOCK 42. And 10 times as many votes as the Remington R51. No matter how much money Remington and GLOCK pumped into their marketing campaigns, SIG SAUER beat out the competition with a solid product.
TTAG Readers’ Choice Awards methodology
The poll was conducted using a custom polling application which presented each respondent with a list of options for each category. Respondents could either select from the list, choose not to respond, or add an additional option at the bottom. Any added items would be displayed to all subsequent respondents (any item worthy of “Item of the Year” would, in theory, be added fairly quickly by respondents). Items which were not relevant (outside the time frame or irrelevant responses, like “my homemade ammo” for best ammo of the year) were periodically removed, and all associated votes for that item in that category were eliminated as well. Respondents were discouraged from voting multiple times by having their IP address recorded and banned from making subsequent responses. The polling period lasted 7 full days and elicited 1,104 responses.
I took one look at this handgun and thought ‘Yeah, riiight, Sig’ll be able to sell that in CA.’
Sure enough, nowhere to be seen on the Roster of Handguns Certified for Sale.
http://certguns.doj.ca.gov/
Surprised; nah!
No new hand gun has been or will be added to the Roster since CA added the requirement of micro stamping. What the state is requiring doesn’t exist.
I just picked one up here in CALIFORNIA! You have to go through an SSE dealer but come Jan 1st 2015 you will no longer be able to use the exemption.
Actually I get my P320 here in a couple days in California thanks to the Single Shot Exemption which unfortunately closed January 1st. But there are a few gun dealers that still have a couple in stock like Brentwood Armory.
not a striker fan, the modularity is nice. the less crap that funnels thru my guy the better.
they’re getting close…
I am seriously surprised I expected Hk to win since they have the largest amount of hype behind it. Both the R51 and the G42 were a solid meh. But Hk fan boys losing their mind over the VP9 resulted in the most chatter.
But I agree with the selection the Sig P320 is a very solid design, bring the best of the P250 with brand new excellent striker fired trigger.
The R51 wasn’t a “meh,” it was a disaster.
The G42 as far as I know was OK (maybe not exciting, but solid) except there were two kinds of ammo it wouldn’t eat.
Though you’d think from some of the gun mags that featured it the R51 on the cover that it was the be all and end all of self-defense pistols. And that is why I can’t take most advertiser driver publications seriously, they’re mostly advertisements masked as articles.
Can’t disagree.
I’ll bet the folks at Remington would LOVE to have people think the R51 was as good as “Meh”.
The P320 was an impulse buy for me (Hello, my name is Bill and I have a Sig addiction…) and I’ve been genuinely delighted with how it fires. Combine that with its capacity and it’s beginning to take over for my P938 as my go-to carry gun.
I have the P320 and I like it except for 1 thing, the trigger. There is a gap between the bottom of the trigger and the guard that is large enough that my finger tends to get pinched in there and after a 100 rounds or so my finger hurts. My Bersa BP9cc had the same issue. Other than that, I love the gun, it’s a keeper for sure.
Wow! As something akin to a SIG fanboy, this and the MPX award are very cool.
I recently won one of these in the SIG take a shot contest. My video is one of the semi-finalists. It hasn’t arrived yet, but I’m really looking forward to replacing my G19 with the P320 as my daily carry.
If anyone is interested, you can still see why the P320 is epic, and vote for my video as well!
https://review.wizehive.com/voting/view/sigsauervoting/27895/2492084
Too many striker-fired models in production today, nowhere near enough SAO designs, *especially* in the compact/sub-compact range. The Sig P238 is about the best of them out there that isn’t >$1,000 MSRP, but yet Sig made the decision to completely ruin a perfectly good SAO trigger with an 8lb pull to make the entire line of them MA-compliant for some completely unfathomable and inexplicable reason.
Quick question, are we going to get to see the “runner ups” from the polls?
The link to the full results is in the article above. You can see every single item on the poll and every single vote right there.
Sorry I missed that link, thanks Nick.
What 27 of you voted for the R51 and where do I go to buy what you were drinking?
Really Surprised at this. It’s a P250 with a striker… Must have been a slow year.
This is coming from a multi-SIG owner
The only reason the p320 exists is because it is sig’s entry into the us army modular handgun competition.
It does strongly (and probably superficially) resemble the CZ P-07 and P-09.
I’ve owned, carried and shot: Glocks, Smiths of all kinds, XD’s, CZ’s and several 220’s, 226’s (even an X6!), 1911’s etc…
I now only have five P320’s as my main defensive handguns. I went with a Sig striker as, If I laid off of practice for a week or two, going from double to single action cased me accuracy issues. Not being a good natural shot, this caused concern for my ability to make first shot hits count.
Hands down the best striker fired trigger and it still feels and fires like a Sig, which I like better than anything other than the oh so sweet steel framed CZ’s. IMO of course… Accuracy is on par with most guns made nowadays, I.E. one hole groups out to 25 yards if YOU’RE capable.
Not only are they the easiest to detail strip, but oddly, they stay cleaner, almost like the barrel stays in battery longer and less crap gets into the inner workings. Never seen this before with any pistol I’ve owned.
For those curious, the P250 magazines and holsters work, Blade Tech’s being my favorite. You can run the full size mags (17 rounds) in the compact with magazine spacers that are available from Top Gun Supply. The spacer simply fills in the space between the extended mag and the bottom of the grip.
You seem to like the CZ (steel frames, not the 07 and 09) a lot. What made you decide on the 320 specifically over the CZs?
On a different subject you brought up–I’m definitely with you on not liking having two different trigger pulls. I stopped carrying the Beretta 92 because of that very issue. Of course there are non-striker guns that don’t have that issue, also (such as some of those steel framed CZs).
Like? Hell, I love steel and alloy framed CZ’s (not the clones, other than Tangfoglio’s). When I first started collecting them approx ten years ago, there were no kydex IWB or OWB holsters to be found. I can’t stand leather as it sucks in all ways other than looks compared to kydex, so that was issue number one. Two, and this wasn’t as big an issue as its seems to me nowadays is weight. I carried full size 1911’s as well as nearly every model of CZ ( even the 97) and even with good, custom holsters, having my pants try to hit the floor at every restroom visit just got old. I CC everyday all day, even when I worked and it just got annoying to say the least. Even a few ounces less weight carried feels worlds different.
I’m retired so I have more free time than most and as such can practice more, but as I’m just not a natural shot, I paired down from all the other pistols and revolvers I had to insure that I am very intimate with my main self defense weapon. I just don’t have the skill set or natural ability to have a bunch of different guns with different controls and triggers.
I keep eying deals on CZ’s to be sure, as after having 30 or so 220-226 based EXPENSIVE pistols, CZ’s seem inexpensive in comparison. And technically I don’t need anymore pistols….except a 320 in FDE, yeah, just one more pistol is all I need. LOL
there are plenty of DAO firearms to choose from, so this does not seem to be justification enough for the p320.
Tim beat me to the shameless self promotion, but we also won a P320 in the Sig video contest. Should be here just in time for Christmas!
If you want to see my wife explain why the P320 is great (and get a dose of humor) you can see (and vote!) for our video here: https://review.wizehive.com/voting/view/sigsauervoting/27895/2500857/0